Far Cry 2 Triple-Format Face-Off Comments by Richard Leadbetter

Rich Self, is that really your name?

Handbags at the ready.

These kind of articles are for arguing-the-toss purposes.

Told you it was coming ;)

I love watching the videos for a resounding game of "they look the same".

Can you imagine - all that uni time and effort to end up writing dull shit like this?

Wasted life :/

oh my god! the shadows! its the END FOR US ALL.

compare the chrono trigger and far cry images on the front page :D

I have voted this game 6/10. Its just not interesting enough

This one didn't actually have that tinge of venow in the writing that they usually do, so I believe it totally. I still really, really wish they'd get the colour balance sorted out so we can actually compare them ourselves instead of having one picture look overly bright/dark.

Regret buying this game should have rented it in retrospect

A beautiful, engaging game that's broken by a fuckwitted structure (endless travelling punctuated by endless shoot-outs) and which should have been sorted out at the game design phase. All it does is make you play for longer and get more frustrated.

Shame.

Odd that the article says that the console versions don't use v-sync when had that been the case surely you'd have seen more than 10-30% screen tearing? I always thought Far Cry 2, like many other well coded current gen games such as Gears of War and its superior sequel, only disables v-sync when the framerate drops too low, otherwise the image is v-synced and free of screen tearing.

I have Far Cry 2 for both the Xbox 360 and PC. The PC version, as the article says, is the best version, looking and running better on my ageing setup without any screen tearing and with better shadows and textures, and at a much higher resolution of 1680x1050. That said, it has crashed more than the 360 version (which actually hasn't crashed at all) and has a tendency to corrupt my sound card's EAX presets for some reason thus wiping out my sound so the 360's shortcomings are more than made up by its stability IMO!

Should i try one of the pizza's that are prepared instore from asda ?

Keep up the good work Rich, technical analysis of the output is interesting.

So, the emerging theme is - if it comes out on PC and console, get the PC version. Given that most of the quality XBox 360 releases come out on PC eventually also, this surely means that the dream combination is Wii and PS3 (for their exclusives) and the PC to cover for itself and the 360.

@Weezer

spot on.
getting fed up of being shot to fuck everywhere i go

im still playing it religiously though, its got an atmosphere.

"For the sake of the one person out there who hasn't read one of these features yet"

:/

Ekkk shadows look fucking awful on the 360. Anywho....

My god who reads this stuff? Read about stuff that matters instead, like "The constant gardener" or some shit. This isn't even entertainment, it is pure meta-game wanking... and yeah yeah I know "that's our business not yours", blah blah

Given the scale of the enviroments and the objects in it FarCry 2 looks impressive,but it's still not as pretty as the better realized Unreal 3 engined games like GoW2,Mass Effect,even Mirror's Edge!

The game itself is a mess,both off and online,its only saving grace the awesome map editor.

My goodness, Darren is probably the only one left who reads these face-offs. His reply almost made me fall asleep. Honestly, mate, who cares about your EAX-presets?

No geeky comparision will improve this games' broken design. Off to eBay.

Far Cry 2 looks miles better than any UE3 powered game. Unless you like watching texture pop-in. Shame about the terrible shadowing found in the 360 version of Far Cry 2. Perhaps they should have implemented a different technique.

Far Cry 2 looks miles better than any UE3 powered game. Unless you like watching texture pop-in. Shame about the terrible shadowing found in the 360 version of Far Cry 2. Perhaps they should have implemented a different technique.


I disagree.FarCry 2 has noticeable objects pop-in in the driving sections and no texture pop-in,because the texture quality on the console versions is average at best.The Unreal games has their own issues,but for eye-candy almost nothing comes close on 360.

Do you have large screen?I have noticed that on smaller screens stuff like GTA4 looks more impressive than Mass Effect.However on 75'' screen GTA4 looks like PoS,while Mass Effect is simply jaw-dropping and you can really appreciate the advanced texturing and high polygon counts.

Yea, that environmental pop-up is to be expected in open world games. It's not really the same as watching textures pop-in all the time.

@Schrödinger - Something tells me you're not the brightest of sparks... since, as you infer, I'm the only one who reads these face-offs but you thought you'd post a comment here anyway, presumably without having actually read the article! Wow, some real intelligence at work there, I see!!! ;)

Whatever, my point was that the game corrupts the sound on my PC when it crashes because that's the nature of games on the system - there's so many trillions of combinations of hardware that it is impossible for any two people to enjoy the exact same experience on the system. Sometimes getting the games to work properly means you end up spending more take doing that then actually playing it. Not so with the 360 or PS3 so while the console versions may well be inferior, they work perfectly out of the box and run the same for everyone on that particular platform. Thus poor looking shadows are a worthy compromise for the convenience of actually been able to play the bloody game!

Oh, you've nodded off again, I see... :P

Yeah,it's noticeable,but hardly all the time.Fair price to pay for the graphical fidelity,but obviously it buggers some people to no end.

No mention of the fact that the PC version was lumbered with consolisms, like a completely useless matchmaking server browser, no 16:10 support and some really stupid bugs? Because it's this sort of thing that people actually care about.

The reason EG can afford the bandwidth for these super high resolution comparison videos is because noone fucking watches them.

"so while the console versions may well be inferior"

I'd say they are superior, because they work. :p

I think I prefer the smoother look of the PS3 version but bloody hell does that tear or what?!

Eurogamer are the biggest graphic whores on the planet, and I fear that with each generation gameplay will take a back seat and all reviewers and fanboys will talk about is which game has the best shadows or some other bollocks.At least Nintendo have the brains to realise that realism is going to be gamings downfall. You can't have games like GTA with photo realism, they will be banned in every country on the planet. And imagine Resident evil with photo realistic gore and scares, people will be dropping dead from heart attacks.

Stop caring so much about graphics, they will hit a wall one day and all that will be left is gameplay.

These articles have to continue, if only for the amusing comments of people who are so ANNOYED by them, but just don't manage to ignore them.

no 16:10 support

Eh, what? Works perfectly fine in 16:10. Unless you're on about the old widescreen non-issue. Hint: 16:10 on the PC gives you exactly the same field of view as on the consoles (apart from that it's 16:9 on the latter). It's designed for widescreen, and 4:3 adds stuff on the top and the bottom.

Please stop these.

^^^ No-ones forcing you to read them.

Besides, I like them, and many others do too. :)

Most of the arguments in the comments sections of Rich's articles are not by rabid fanboys trying to protect 'their system', it's by people who take these comparison articles extremely to heart, and feel the need to mention it every time, going on about how they spark fanboy arguments (which presumably must be taking place somewhere between all these comments, somehow).

Honestly, some people here do find these articles interesting, and if there's any negativity associated with these articles, it comes stictly from thje people who don't like these comparative articles, not fanboys.

I tend to sit on Richards site now because its quite an interesting read.

UncleLou: It's designed for widescreen, and 4:3 adds stuff on the top and the bottom.

The "widescreen" implementation is clearly cropped 4:3 rather than designed for the aspect ratio and 4:3 being 'expanded'; FarCry 2's "widescreen" makes the driving more difficult for one thing and good portion of the gun/arm graphic is cropped off the image.

But the killer proof is if you split the display over three screens the 4:3 image is cropped so much that it becomes a thin slit!

Just because it's also broken on the consoles does not mean it's not broken on PC, same was true of Bioshock on Xbox 360 and 2K fixed it.

yup, Unclelou, widescreen is broken in Far Cry 2. The community made patch shows how it should work and makes the image much better. It may not be obvious on the consoles as their limitedto either 4:3 or 16:9, but using some widescreen settings on the PC shows what a mess they made of it. Go see the example images of triple screen setups Stoo Monster mentions above - http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/for...

At the 5040x1050 rez its completely unplayable, you cant see anything. It's cropped to ludicrous levels.

Widescreen should give a wider view than 4:3. How hard is that for people to get ;)

Who the fuck is Schrödinger ? Freud ?

He drops by to talk amount the comments. Freaky stuff... .

If people REALLY DO care about minor differences in the way the pixels are displayed on the games they're playing (as opposed to just enjoying the game) - it really does say a lot about the games themselves doesnt it?

Quincunx.

Regarding those screen tear measurements that are listed in most of these "face-offs", are they actually supposed to be visible to the naked eye or mostly just apparent when you're looking at a list of numbers compiled by your fancy analysis tools?

In nearly all the cases where these articles have suggested screen tearing on 10-20+% of the frames (regardless of which console version we're talking about, though I do buy the PS3 version of nearly all games), it really hasn't matched what I've actually been witnessing during gameplay on my 40" 1080p Samsung M87.
A few torn frames here and there, sure, but I sure as hell don't see those ugly tear lines running down my screen for an average of 6-12+ seconds every minute.

The newest trend in these articles seems to be the desire for commenters to flame those who say comparisons invite fanboys. In a sort of post-ironic irony, new battle lines have been drawn, with comparison article fanboys currently ~50:50 to anti-comparison article fanboys.

Indeed, sometimes the comparison-fanboys are so ardent they post before the anti-comparison fanboys, foretelling of the comparison-hating commenters that will post imminently, themselves trying to warn of impending fanboys.

Of course the additional irony that many posts chastise others for not being able to ignore these articles, whilst themselves posting about eminently ignorable comments, is entirely lost.

Keep up the good work!

@UncleLou

spot on - and I am one of them! But you're right, we are amusing :)

I like these articles because the 360 and pc always come on top and they are my preferred gaming platforms.

Heh. I'm trying to imagine having this on my PC, then listening to the recommendation of effectivley cuttng off a limb and using an xbox 360 joypad instead of a mouse and keyboard. Haha. Ahahahahahaha! Ha. *cough*

I like these articles. But only because the PC always wins, thus proving that the Xbox/PS3 willy-waving contest is completely irrelevent.

Also pisses all over the bollocks about HD gaming from the console manufacturers as well, when a lot of their games barely run at above SD resolutions.

I don't know what it is but console's are just better than PC's for gaming IMO, they are built and used primarily for one purpose(of course more and more multimedia capabilities are creeping in and also the distinction between PC and console is getting smaller).

I agree PC's will always eventually win the price/performance battle but not in the first year... anyone attempting to say as such needs to learn about the overhead associated with PC gaming compared to console gaming, the CPU has the greatest overhead and to a lesser extent the GPU(5-10%) , plus any attempts to just match up the exact paper specs regardless of architectual differences and efficiencies ect is just pointless.

I could build a PC instead of getting a 360 early next year but:

a) I find the whole upgrading side of PC gaming wastefull, even if you could upgrade to a better performing machine for the same price, the sell on value of your existing gear is typically poor (good luck selling the parts on and trying to make something back off it) and you are only paying for the gaming performance then too since your existing setup can do all those boasted about extras used to justify the cost.

b) Power consumption: fine build an expensive PC with SLI cards and quad cores and whopping great big PSU and indeed electricity bill to power it but you can also explain to Bono why the Polar bears are getting sun tans.

c) Consoles are more portable and plug and play ect... gaming just feels right done that way, its also exactly as the devs chose it for that platform.

@Calgon: Yeah, I don't think PCs are somehow inherently better than consoles. If you wanna play games on a console, go ahead, i'm really not bothered.

It's just vaguely annoying to me that Sony and to a slightly lesser extent Microsoft go on and on about HD gaming and how fantastic it is when half the time their consoles are only just about running above SD anyway. To be honest, i don't really even care about HD, it just annoys me that the console manufacturers made it out to be so important and then couldn't really achieve it anyway.

So that's why it's slightly satisfying to see them getting blown out of the water by PC. See?

LMAO, at 360s dithered crappy shadows compared.

and lol they have to pay to play the multiplayer..lolz